What the Outreach Marketing Virtual Summit Tells us About Marketing Trends

On September 23rd, we hosted our second Outreach Marketing Virtual Summit here at GroupHigh. We had over 30 presentations and over 2,000 people tuned in to soak up new trends, strategies and tactics in the world of outreach marketing.

I’ve developed my own marketing strategy by identifying common themes in strategies used by marketers that I admire. Of course I did that with all of our awesome presentations and I want to share what I observed as common themes and trends talked about at the summit. They are trends for a reason and hopefully these talks will help you take your outreach marketing strategy to the next level. (View talks here)

Authenticity is the new black.

Whether it’s through honesty (even when you screwed up) or through a human vibe, consumers trust and long for brands they can relate to. Strategies thrown around at the summit range from not being afraid to give your customers a social voice—the bad and the good all contribute to a brand’s human image—to being passionate in your relationship with consumers.

Chris Keevill: The Truth Will Set Us Free: It’s Time to Start Trusting Customers on Social

Consumers want friends.

Consumers want to be able to interact with the brands they love or are checking out socially. They want conversations in the comments section of blog posts, to be tweeted back to and to recognized for their advocacy. A good friend provides their friends with information and advice they need—not an agenda. Build your brand in to a best friend vestibule!

Heard this a few times today: It’s not about what *you* want, as a marketer. It’s about what your *customers* want/need. #outreachmarketing

Presentations are available for a whole year, I’ve never been to an in person conference with that element!

Vconference not only offers an awesome platform to host but they have staff that helped with the technical components of putting together a conference. The networking and conversations that occurred all day on Twitter were just as good as the presentations. I made new friends!

Put together your own conference with this talk:

Stephen Wynkoop: How to Incorporate Virtual Events in to Your Digital Strategy

Visually driven is not optional.

Attention spans are getting shorter and long blocks of texts coming at readers is terrifying. There are so many creative ways to break up scary text blocks with custom images and blog posts that are easy to digest through concise headings and sub headings. I learned some great ways to create custom images—because stock photos are flat—without using Photoshop!

Ramp up your visually driven strategy with these talks:

Julia Campbell: How to Create Eye Catching Graphics without Photoshop

Danny Ashton: How to Build a Viral Idea Machine

Advocates are where it’s at.

Through happy consumers and lovers of your brand the best marketing and brand conversations are taking place. Marketers are focusing more than ever on not only harnessing these voices and giving them a place to be heard. Private Facebook groups and advocate marketing platforms are exponentially growing.

Love on your advocates after these talks:

Melanie Cohn: Influencer and Advocate Strategies for Instagram

Jess Ryan: Leveraging Brand Passion to Create a Social Media Brand Ambassador Program for Whole Foods

Robert Clarke: How Influencers Can Help Your Crown Your Content King

Data isn’t boring.

Your brand’s data can educate your consumers on industry trends and share valuable insight. The key is to present it in a way that people can use and understand. Infographics and podcasts are a fantastic medium in which to introduce your data to the world!

Silos are being knocked down.

And it’s about time too. As someone who lives and breathes outreach marketing, I know how hard it can be to integrate sales and marketing. Let alone track and execute tactics in one place so that data and strategy don’t exist in a million applications, emails and in person conversations. Sales and marketing here at GroupHigh are integrated and full of communication which has helped our marketing efforts a ton!

Kristen Matthews

Kristen is the director of all things digital marketing at GroupHigh. When she isn't reading influencer marketing case studies or digging for awesome data, she can be found at one of Boulder's awesome breweries or hiking in the trees.

I know this was a labor of love for you and you didn’t sleep the week before, but it was really well done. I heard nothing but great things about the event, how it was run, and the caliber of content. Congrats!!

Thanks for the inclusion of my tweet! 140 characters are not enough to include ALL of my favourites from the summit. Loved the free spirit of being able to pop in and out when you have a chance and the wide range of topics and large selection of resources. There was no shortage of opportunities to learn! I look forward to the next event and maybe one day being able to participate as a presenter!